Tag Archives: tip

When was the last time you visited the website of a small local business? You probably had a question in mind – did the website answer it straight away? Read the full post for a list of five elements every local business website should have.

We recently redesigned the signup process for Naview and changed from a Plans page and a separate sign-up form to having Plans and Signup on the same page. Read the full post for details on the thinking behind the redesign.

When creating something new it is essential to name it. Whether it’s a product, service, or startup that you’re working on it has to have a name so you can identify it, identify with it and start telling others about it. Read the full post for practical tips on how to get started with naming.

When designing wireframes you typically have common elements like header and footer that you want to include on several separate screens. Read the full post on how to use OmniGraffle Pro shared layers to maintain and reuse these common elements.

Moderated, task-based testing is the mainstay of usability testing and most practitioners are familiar with it. At Volkside we normally give participants their tasks verbally, however more recently we have experimented with also giving them a printed copy of each task. Read the full post for more.

Ricardo Semler urges us to keep our memos short: “If you really want someone to evaluate a project’s chances, only give them a single page to do it — and make them write a headline that gets to the point, as in a newspaper.” Semler is the CEO of the industrial conglomerate Semco and the author of Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace (1993). Read the full post for more.

In recent card sorting sessions, we have made a poster with “card sorting guidelines” available to the participants. These guidelines serve as a quick reference when the participants are immersed in sorting the cards and remind them of the “do’s” and “don’ts” in grouping and labelling. Read the full post for more.